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Car salesmen - worse than bankers?

Bankers take solace; public opinion may have turned against you in the last few years, but you will forever be held in higher regard than car dealers.

That is according to Daily Mail’s online title thisismoney.co.uk, which recently published a story warning consumers not to be taken in by “pricey” forecourt car finance at a time when high street lenders were offering personal loans at rates as low as 6 per cent.

The Mail’s warning was prompted by the announcement by the Finance and Leasing Association (FLA) that some 66 per cent of new cars purchased in March - a peak month for motor retail - were bought via dealer finance, a fairly astonishing leap from 54.2 per cent last March.

The article quoted Andrew Hagger of comparison site Moneynet, warning consumers not to get “carried away” by the patter of “smooth-talking car salesmen” and sign up for finance without shopping around for cheaper deals.

But is the rise in dealer finance seen over the last two years due to a sudden influx of brutally persuasive forecourt finance salespeople, or indeed a sudden deterioration in the average UK consumer’s desire to seek out cheaper deals?

Nope. It’s the car manufacturers themselves, and the fact that, in many cases, they are undercutting the banks on price.

The UK new car market, a vital arena for global carmakers, has been having a hard time for a few years now, and is still desperately trying to push back into the two million-units-plus annual sales total enjoyed before the recession.

Manufacturers, engaged in a prolonged battle to keep the metal moving through dealerships and into suburban driveways, have seized any opportunity to incentivise purchases. The scrappage scheme was a temporary panacea, but with that gone, finance has become the weapon of choice.

Low- and even zero-percent interest deals have proliferated in the last two years, and have not only been a large part of the reason for any growth in the UK new car market, but for the ballooning penetration rate of finance into motor retail.

The deals are provided by the vast captive finance houses – essentially pet banks - of the carmakers, and since these are fed directly from the manufacturer balance sheet, any revenue lost in low interest rates is more than mitigated by the revenue contribution of sales made possible through the offering of cheap finance. The captives are, essentially, colossal and extremely well-accounted marketing departments.

If anything, the gradual softening of personal loan rates offered by the high street – a trend which has corresponded chronologically with the rise of dealer finance – could be seen in part as an attempt by banks to compete with the boom in manufacturer offers.

But even taking the auto industry’s mass marketing campaign out of the equation and looking at the deals offered by non-captive finance houses (nearly all of which, incidentally, are bank subsidiaries anyway), are consumers really being offered a raw deal in comparison to personal loan rates?

It seems highly unlikely. After all, the penetration of finance into used car sales – a section of the market largely ignored by the captives since it offers little benefit to manufacturers – has also risen since the onset of hard times for the consumer pocket.

Being blunt, this is because car finance offers many people a way to fund a car when they are not able to get affordable credit elsewhere. The reason for this is fairly simple. Motor finance providers secure their lending against the car purchased, which gives them an alternative way to mitigate credit risk besides hiking up APR on a deal.

This does leave customers at risk of vehicle repossession if payments are not maintained. However, with the current regulatory climate leaning heavily on those companies which take a louche approach to affordability in their lending, not to mention the costs involved in repossession, it’s not as if lenders are funding vehicles with a view to seeing them again within a year.

In fact, default rates in the motor finance sector have been sitting at a historic low in the years of relatively cautious lending since the recession, despite the weakness of the UK household wallet.

So far in this discussion, we’ve taken the high street lenders on their word with regard to advertised rates. But there is, you may be unsurprised to hear, a fairly heft salt cellar to be pinched from when considering these claims. I’ll be looking to get stuck into that next time.

It may indeed be a good time for car dealers looking to entice people into signing up for finance, but to be fair to this much-maligned sector of the retail industry, they may actually be telling the truth when they tell potential buyers they’re doing them a favour.

I'm a Welsh Asian - so why doesn't the Welsh Assembly have a box for me to tick?

As someone born in Caerphilly, who grew up in Wales, and is learning Welsh, I feel nothing but Welsh. I am a proud Welsh Asian – and yet the Welsh Assembly appear to be telling me and many like me that that’s not an option.

An equalities form issued in Wales, by the Welsh Assembly, that does not have an option to identify as non-white and Welsh. What kind of message does this send, especially at a time of public worries about integration? Sadly, I am not so surprised at this from an institution which, despite a 17-year history, seems to still struggle with the very basics of equality and diversity.

By the omission of options to identify as Welsh and Asian, Welsh and black, Welsh and mixed heritage (I could go on), the Welsh Assembly's form has told us something wider about the institutional perception of our diverse communities in Wales. There are options on the form for "Asian or Asian British Indian" and "Black or Black British Caribbean", to give but two examples. And also for "White British", "White Irish" and "White Welsh". But not for "Asian Welsh", or "Black Welsh". Did it not occur to anyone that there was something wrong?

It seems like a monumental error by the Welsh Assembly Commission, which designed the form, and a telling one at that.

A predominantly white institution (there are two non-white Assembly members out of 60 and there has never been a female Black, Asian or minority ethnic Assembly member) has dictated which ethnic group is deemed to look Welsh enough to tick their box (for those of us Welsh Asians, it seems the only box to tick is that most Orientalist of descriptions, "Other").

Over the summer, meanwhile, we saw the First minister of Wales Carwyn Jones rather clumsily assemble his Brexit advisory group. This group was made up of predominantly white, middle aged men, and not a single person from a black, Asian and minority ethnic background. It seems that despite the box ticking exercises, the First Minister is taking advice from his “White Welsh” group.

And it matters. The Welsh Assembly was established with a statutory duty to promote equality in Wales. In June, 17 out of 22 local authority areas in Wales voted Leave. Post-referendum, our proud Welsh BAME communities have been affected by hate crime. The perpetrators wish to draw a distinction between "them" and "us". Our national parliament is doing nothing to challenge such a distinction. Does it really think there are no non-white Welsh people in Wales?

So what you can ✅White & Welsh but Black or Asian & Welsh is not an option?! Pretty poor & actually ignorant from the Assembly. https://t.co/upX9gerpiq

In Wales, we have a huge sense of overwhelming pride in what it means to be Welsh, from pride in our rugby and football teams, our language, to our food and our culture. Many friends over the years from different backgrounds have come to Wales to either study or work, fallen in love with our country and chosen to make it their home. They identify as Welsh. The thing about those of us who are Welsh and proud is that we understand that we are stronger in our diversity and stronger together as a Welsh nation. It’s a shame that our Welsh Assembly is not operating with that same sense of understanding that we have in our communities in Wales.

No doubt the nameless form creator simply copied a format seen elsewhere, and would argue the omission is not their fault. Yet in these tense times, such an omission seems to arrogantly suggest Welsh is something exclusively White.

The Welsh Assembly has a long way to travel on the road to creating a fairer society. From these kind of blunders, it seems clear that it is not even off the starting line.

Shazia Awan is an equality activist and Consultant advising on equality and diversity issues. She is launching Women Create, a social enterprise to help women and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into enterprise and employment. She is Vice President of the Council for Voluntary Youth Services in Wales, is an Ambassador to Show Racism the Red Card and she was the first Asian woman to address a Welsh Tory party conference.

Shazia Awan is an equality activist. She is launching Women Create, a social enterprise to help women and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into enterprise and employment. She is Vice President of the Council for Voluntary Youth Services in Wales and she was the first Asian woman to address a Welsh Tory party conference. You can follow her @shaziaawan.